Quotes by Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss -- ?" "...”

“Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.”

“I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.”

“She hated herself more than she could express.”

“But the inexplicability of the General's conduct dwelt much on her thoughts. That he was very particular in his eating, she had, by her own unassisted observation, already discovered; but why shoul...”

“If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.”

“To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from bei...”

“each found her greatest safety in silence”

“I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”

“[Mrs. Allen was] never satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely ever any exchange of opi...”

“If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to the right.”

“What a revolution in her ideas!”

“Young people do not like to be always thwarted.”

“A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride.”

“Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.”

“I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depen...”

“And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get anothe...”

“Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and [Henry] looked as if he was aware of it.”

“But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?""Yes, I am fond of history.""I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex ...”

“How I hate the sight of an umbrella!”